Invasive Species (Part 3 of 4)

After stepping outside the eatery, I was relieved to see that my driver had stuck around, as agreed; albeit sound asleep behind the wheel of his hack. I tapped on his window, and he instantaneously sprang wide awake with a start. The plastic-lidded paper cup of chai I offered him was received wholeheartedly and, after taking a deep gulp of the drink, he started his cab and we were off to my hotel: the Bhavatarini Holiday Inn on Taki Uttar Bari road near the outer edge of town.

The night was late and extremely muggy, if not intolerably so. Some nights can be monstrously hot in Kolkata, reaching highs of close to 40º, and oppressively high in humidity to boot. Tonight there was only a slight breeze, but it did little good. By the time we reached the inn, I was drenched with sweat and feeling uncomfortable as hell.

The place was old, built of crumbling brick and stone, and patched with plaster and concrete. From the looks of it, I would say that it possibly dated as far back as the days of Kolkata’s beginnings, when the now-massive metropolis had been but a mere mangy hill station. The inn’s door was locked, and the building was dark. I gave the old wooden door a good rapping-on. I seemed to be the only person around this lonely section of neighborhood, presumably due to the lateness of the hour, as it was by now well past two in the a.m. At first there was no answer, but after another minute or so I distinctly heard voices coming from within.

I banged on the door again—extra-hard this time—just for good measure. At long last, the door creaked slowly open and an old man peeped cautiously out. I handed him my reservation papers, only to have him promptly shut the door in my face, much to my annoyance. A few seconds later it opened again, and this time a younger man appeared.

“Hello!” he said cheerfully, ushering me into the establishment with a hospitable flourish.

After checking-in, I was shown to my room on the second floor. It was decent lodging for the price, and I had nothing to complain about.

I unpacked my things, as I always do before I crash for the night at any hotel. The clothes went into whatever dresser or armoire was available; the room happened to come with both these items of furniture. I then set-up my personal ‘altar’ of miscellaneous religious items and lit three sticks of sandalwood- and cherry-scented incense. After clapping three times and ‘washing’ myself with the aromatic smoke, I set about securing my ghost-box with a few choice spells. Those readers who’ve been paying proper attention will recall that this to-all-outward-appearances unassuming wooden box contained the spirit of an unfortunate woman who I’d encountered in New Delhi.

“Won’t be much longer now,” I said close to box as I retightened the length of red thread that held its lid on tight before placing the object (gently) on the tabletop along with the rest of my sacred paraphernalia. We two—the she-ghost and I—had a journey ahead of us to Hampi in Karnataka. It’s there that I plan to deliver the ghost into the hands of someone who might help her stranded soul to find eternal peace.

My hotel room’s neatly-made bed sure looked inviting, but as always I first had to check it for, um, ‘uninvited guests’. I quickly yanked the bedsheets back then checked both under the pillows and inside their slipcovers. Nothing was in the bed that shouldn’t be, which was a good thing. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d pulled back the covers to find a nest of mice—or worse yet, a snake!—bedding-down for the night beneath them. Worst case scenario, I might discover a whopping great King Cobra coiled-up in my bed one of these days, although to this point (knock on wood and fingers crossed!) it hadn’t happened. Come to think of it, there are far scarier critters in this world than cobras to worry about…

Having thoroughly checked my bed over beforehand, as I gratefully lay down to sleep with a long sigh of relief, I kept thinking back to my impromptu and highly-unusual meeting with Mr. Roy. As though he/it had foreseen my arrival, the creature seemed to have been fully expecting me. The feeling I had that the raktapishacha-man knew more about the reason for my visit to West Bengal—possibly even more than I did—was nagging at me no end. He was a monster, for sure, yet a most pleasant one indeed. But no matter how cordial and civilized our initial interaction had been, Mr. Roy was a parahuman at heart, after all, and therefore not entirely to be trusted…if at all.

Not to be trusted, I thought, drowsing in that deliciously languorous limbo that lies somewhere between half-asleep and half-awake (or vice versa). Yeah…

At that thought, I all-of-a-sudden rolled out of bed, jumped to my feet, grabbed my nearby backpack, which I always kept within arm’s length for easy access. I then seated myself in the armchair at bedside and began rummaging through it.

“Here we go,” I said to myself, removing the chili-and-lemon talisman from within my pack.

The talisman smelled delightful, the still-fresh chilis’ piquant aroma tickling my nasal passages. This pleasing sensation really perked me up and snapped me out of my previous state of drowsiness. Being as quiet as possible about it, I opened the door to my room and peered warily around its jamb out into the dimly-lighted hallway. Handily enough, there was a small screwed-in hook protruding from the outside of my door directly below where the room number was affixed, so I tied the charm to it, making doubly sure not only that the knot was tight but that the hook was firmly embedded in the wood.

“There, that’ll do it,” I whispered, then went back to bed. The short time I’d spent drowsily awaiting sleep proper to come had been sufficient to recharge my batteries somewhat, so I was now feeling too awake and energized to be able to sink back into that pleasant ‘zone,’ halfway between Slumberland and wakefulness, I’d been so contentedly immersed in before.

Lying on my back looking up at the ceiling, I again reviewed the events of the past day and night in my mind.

…Or are you trying to get a peek down my blouse?!

Ah, Meg! I hope you’re having a good time tonight, wherever you are. I rolled over onto my side and hugged my pillow.

…You can’t catch anything from me, dear Christopher. Not unless I bite you!

“Raktapishacha,” I whispered breathlessly into the darkness of my room, shivering.

My thoughts drifted, wavering, waxing and waning and blurring into one another, as they often do when one is falling into a deep and blissful slumber…

Why, you may well wonder is it that I am continually having encounters with The Supernatural? I’m sure that many other people besides me do; I simply have the good fortune to survive such potentially deadly happenstances… thus far, anyway. We had a pleasant encounter, Mr. Ray and I. Was it pure luck for me to have walked away from him alive and unmolested? Creatures of nether folklore, such as vampires, ghosts and other things that were once human beings––also those that never were; devils, imps, gods et al––are by their very nature unhuman (hence, we Blaisdell Brothers’ handy catch-all, ‘parahumans’), so their reasoning can’t be expected to follow the same lines of logic that we, as mere mortal Homo Sapiens, bound to the ‘real’ world and all its unbreakable physical laws, pride ourselves in following.

Despite my brain now going into overdrive, my body, after X number hours of virtually uninterrupted activity and lack of rest, was presently beginning to shut down, out of sheer necessity for survival. My eyelids were growing heavier by the second. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow, I thought. Gotta sleep... During our extended tête-à-tête in the hours leading up to midnight and beyond, Mr. Roy had confirmed my suspicion that there was in fact a murderous monster on the prowl in the region, which meant I need to get some shut-eye. Badly.

Outside my room, the sounds of an occasional passing car or truck intermingled with night-calls from the jungle. Little owlets were wide awake, hungrily crying-out for their hunting parents to bring them food. The shrill calls of geckos––which aren’t known as ‘chit-chats’ in many parts of Asia for nothing––and nocturnal crickets kept up an accompanying chorus of scratchy-scratchy rhythms. Further off, a forest owl—possibly the mother or father of those squawking owlets—hooted faintly. Several big blue-assed flies were buzzing around my room, occasionally pinging clumsily off the walls in the darkness, and there was the occasional chattering of local folk as they passed by under my window, oblivious to my presence.

As for any more preternatural life-forms that might be lurking in the vicinity, that lemon-and-chili charm I’d tactically positioned on my door ought to keep anything of that sort at bay. I was certain of that. I was free to rest in peace, secure in the knowledge that the ethnic charm would work its wonders while I slept. Sometimes it’s the simplest and humblest of things that make the best magic!

Within just a few minutes more, I left this world for the one filled with dreams. The erratic buzzings of those pesky flies overhead were shortly silenced as I lost all consciousness…

***

The next day I spent time exploring the city. After last night’s meeting with Mr. Roy and a much-needed sleep crawling with crazy imagery, I needed a day off to be able to get my head together before I decided to dive back into the mystery of the headless corpses again. I walked around the streets, gathering-up any English-language newspapers I found, intermittently chatting with whomever local resident I happened upon who spoke English; basically, did my best to find out what was what and where was where, etc.

Following this excursion to gather information, I beelined it back to my hotel room and sat down to go over what I had found.

Apparently, some fresh rumors had gotten started concerning spooks and their antisocial antics in and around the Taki Golpata Forest. Natural-born skeptic that I am anyway even at the best of times, I took the majority of what I’d been told to be merely the locals making shit up so as to have a laugh at the expense of the weird white foreigner. But there was one crinkly-faced old man who seemed to be deadly serious in his response after I brought up the facts about the headless corpses that had been found back in Kolkata. I learned that this elderly gentleman’s name was Mr. Sett, and I’d found him sitting alone on a park bench, smoking a cigarette while reading a newspaper. He was small in stature and sinewy of build, dressed rather shabbily, although his clothing didn’t appear overly soiled. His eyes were clear, keen and quick, as his mind also seemed to be for a man of his advanced age. Around his neck were hung several religious talismans, including one for Kaali and another of the tantric symbol for Shiva.

“Stay away from the jungle,” he at one point warned me in heavily-accented yet easily-understandable English, seeming genuinely and sincerely concerned that I should heed his warning at all costs.

“I am tracking the whereabouts of a shakchunni,” I explained as I sat down next to him on the bench. He smelled of incense, tobacco, and bung; a not entirely unpleasant odor, so I thought.

“But Bhoot Chaturdashi isn’t for many more moons yet, Sahib,” the amiable oldster pointed-out.

“Yes, I know,” I replied, already well aware of that fact. Taking a different approach, I then said pointedly, “I will pay for information. This bhoot has been killing people, you see.”

At this the old gent took an extra-long drag off his cigarette then exhaled the smoke slowly through his nostrils in twin downward white plumes. He then compulsively horked-up and spat out a gobbet of nicotine-tinged greenish phlegm onto the ground well away from me.

As he looked back into my face afterwards, Mr. Sett chuckled softly and said, “I know of many things, but I am told by many that what I speak of is nonsense.”

“That makes two of us!” I quipped in reply, feeling a sudden kinship with the ol’ fellow.

He seemed pleased and amused by my comment, but didn’t change the seriousness of his tone as he continued speaking: “This I do know: tonight will not be an auspicious one for you, my friend, if you go into the jungle. I have spoken with Shyāmā. She is not happy. No, tonight is not a good night to go into Taki Golpata. So you want to see a shakchunni, eh? That is not a good thing. The jungle is full of ātmārā and bhūta… there are new ones, too. Foreign bhūta…”

Then Mr. Sett laughed long and hard, if not overly loudly.

“Foreign… like you!” he exclaimed with a gap-toothed grin. The oldster wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and took another deep drag from his cigarette. He laughed some more, but this ended with him having a coughing fit that lasted for a good half-minute. Once he’d caught his breath, he added, “I will tell you where to find those which you seek.”

I offered him 1000 rupees, which he quickly accepted and stuffed the folded paper bills into his pocket, crumpling them as he did so. Then old Mr. Sett gave me rather vague directions on how to find the ‘foreign bhūta’ he’d mentioned. As I stood up, he laid a firm hand on my sleeve and smiled grimly.

“You are no fool,” was all he said, tossing his spent cigarette butt on the ground before him then ground the smoldering butt into the dirt under the toe of his sandal. He took pause to hork up another disgusting lump of discolored phlegm before promptly firing-up another coffin-nail. I wished the friendly old chain-smoker “Namaste” before taking my leave.

To be concluded in the next installment of "Invasive Species"